Getting Back Into It

Wow has it been a while since I have written a blog post here.  Lots of crafting has in deed been going on over in my neck of the woods but having kids in school and moving a thousand times sure makes it hard to blog.  I really thought that once kids started school it made my life so much easier to craft and blog.  I'm not quite sure WHY but they start school and then I seem to be even busier then before.  In the last 4 years my family has moved 3 times which has been really hard.  Packing and unpacking and then packing and unpacking again is super frustrating.  One of the times we moved we went from a 2700 sq ft house down to a 1600 sq ft house.  We had some movers help us which was a nightmare and we will NEVER do again, but every time they would bring a box in and ask, "Where do you want this?" I'd have to say, "Just put that in the garage."  It was so depressing.  We didn't have an extra room for an office or craft space which made it even harder to get crafting done.  Not only does it make crafting and sewing hard, but it also makes cleaning hard.  The year that we lived in the 1600 sq ft house I mostly crochet.  haha  Crocheting doesn't take up nearly as much space as all of the other crafting does.  Then we moved again and we live in an 1800 sq ft house.  Not too much bigger but it had a dinning room AND it was an eat in kitchen.  The dinning room has carpet which is the stupidest thing ever, so it is our CRAFT SPACE!  YEAH!  My daughter is 6, almost 7 now and she loves crafting just as much as her momma.  We just went to a birthday party this weekend and after spending way too much on Christmas presents and then my husband just started a new job and won't get paid for a month, we are broke.  Don't you hate that!?  So, my daughter and I crafter presents for her friend instead of buying toys and I'm glad we did.  I bet our presents last longer then the toys she got any ways.

Here is what we came up with the day before the party and the couple of hours leading up to it.

My daughter got a sewing machine from Santa for Christmas and she is dying to sew all of the time now.  So we made the purse together.  She sewed the purse part together and I sewed the straps.  :-)  The purse is reversible which I love.  Then we decided to make her a crown.  I LOVE how it turned out.  In fact, I was thinking about making some and putting them in my easy shop.  We had already bought her this notebook and were going to sew her a cover for it but we ran out of time.  So instead I just cut out the girls name in vinyl and stuck it to it.  My daughter also made her a loom board bracelet and we there in a hair bow that I made a million years ago and never sold.  Score!  So she got 5 things from us that were made with love.  I hope she liked them.  It is really a treat getting to sew and create things with my daughter.  I absolutely love it!  Now if only there were more hours in the day.  

Hello Kitty Crazy

My daughter just turned 4 and she really wanted to have a Hello Kitty party.  I wanted to give her a good Hello Kitty party without spending too much money and getting too much stuff we didn't need.  Especially since she is only 4 and the kids her age don't seem to be big party planners.  :)   I knew I wanted to make them all Hello Kitty ears to wear but I was planning on crocheting them.  I had seen felt ones you could buy on etsy but never crochet ones.  The problem with crochet ones is it would take forever and I didn't start soon enough to get them all done.  I limited the amount of girls she could invite to ten that way it wouldn't be too difficult and cost too much.  I found one or two tutorials on making different Hello Kitty ears but I thought I would write my own and show y'all how I did mine.

First I bought some felt and some headbands.  I couldn't find felt at my walmart but I was in luck because my friend Amanda had some white felt she wasn't using and let me have it for free!  WOO HOO  Free always works for me.  I even have tons left over to give back to her.  Then, I still liked the crochet look so I crochet 11 red bows.  I found that tutorial on pinterest as well.  If you do not crochet, you can just make felt ones or I am sure you could order some crochet bows on etsy. Here is the tutorial for the crochet ones super-simple-crochet-bows

Onto the ears.  I started out by making my own template.  What I didn't like about a lot of the ears I found on line was that I think they were way to big.  It was my thought that they are cuter when the bow is bigger and the ears are smaller.  I made mine about 1 and 1/2 inches tall and I made them 2 inches at the base.  You wanna make them like you would a heart.  You know how you fold the paper in half a trace half a heart?  Fold the paper in half and draw your ear with the base on the fold.  It should look something like this

The fold is where my fingers are holding it.

Then you need to open it up and set it up on the felt and trace it.  At first I tried to just pin the ear in place and then cut around it but it took way too long.  I was trying to avoid the lines I knew would end up on the out side of the ear but don't sweat it because we are going to fix those later any ways.  So just trace the ear and don't forget you need 2 ears for each head band.  Mine looked like this when I was done

Then start cutting those puppies out!

After I cut out all of my ears I got a headband and figured out where I was going to place them.  The headbands I bought had ridges in them to help them to stay on your head and it was just my luck that right where I wanted the ears to go there was a break in the ridges.  This made it super simple to place ALLLL of my ears in the same spot on all of the headbands.  If you can find headbands that do this, it will make life so much easier.  If not, you just need to measure each one before you glue.

Next I place the ear where I want it to go on the underneath of the headband and then put hot glue on the TOP of the headband

Then I squeeze the ear shut only where the glue is on the headband.

Sorry my pictures are a little blurry but I was holding the headband with one hand and the camera in the other.  :)  Next, I put glue along the inside edges of the ear and pressed them together.

 And that's it folks!

Next I just went around and cut off the outside of the ears to get rid of any extra glue sticking out and the pen you can see in the picture.  Then I just hot glued on the bows as well.  I LOVE how they turned out!

And here is my birthday girl wearing her ears!

Success!  Good luck making your ears.  And in case you want to see some other tutorials on making these ears here are two others I found.
Felt bow
Felt Headband  This one is super cute too but I didn't think I had enough felt or enough time to sew all of them.

GOOD LUCK!

AWESOME Popcorn

Have you seen the popcorn recipes out there for popcorn?  I LOVE to make popcorn super unhealthily!  haha  You know, lots of salted sweet cream butter.  One of my guilty pleasures is to buy the kettle corn popcorn and after I pop it, I spread melted butter allllllll over it.  MMMMMM

While at my parents house for Thanksgiving I bought a bag of the candy cane chocolate kisses.  I love white chocolate even more then regular chocolate so these things are like heaven to me.  My mom and I popped some pop corn and guess what we did?  Made the best stinking popcorn ever!  Here is what you need

I love that we used healthy choice popcorn!  haha  Pop the popcorn and while you are doing that you need to unwrap about half the bag of candy kisses.  I put the kisses in a glass mixing bowl with two tablespoons of butter ( I used salted sweet cream ) and stick that in the microwave for about 30 to 45 seconds.  Stir until well mixed

Then pour ALLLLLLL over the popcorn and stir until mixed. 

 Then eat and enjoy the couple of extra pounds you just gained ( with a huge smile on your face ).  I am telling you this stuff is awesome.  I would make more tonight only it is Thanksgiving and I am stuffed.  Not full of turkey but we decided to make potato cheese soup for dinner and eat out of bread bowls.  It was delicious.  Let me know if you try the popcorn!  It's seriously divine!!! 

Sorry the pictures are not great.  I took them with my phone because my camera was in the room where the kids are sleeping.  :)

Crochet Has Taken Over My Life

Well, it's been a LOOOOOOONG time since I have been on here to write a blog.  It was not intentional that I took such a long break, but I feel it was necessary!  I embarked on a new life a couple of months ago and it has taken some major adjusting to figure out a new schedule for myself and my family.  Back in March when I stopped writing, I started up exercising!  It has been fantastic for me.  I started running and doing cardio 3 days a week with a group of girls from my church.  Since I was making a compitment to a healthier me I decided 3 days a week wasn't enough.  I decided 5 days a week was really what I needed to be doing.  So most mornings start out with a hour and a half work out with my friends.  If it isn't the day to work out with them then that means I am grocery shopping or taking my daughter to her dance class.  It has been hard finding the time to do anything I want to do in the creative aspect.  My biggest creative outlet right now being crochet.  It has completely taken over my life.  Let me show you a few of my creations in the crochet department.

So there you have it!  And that is probably only HALF of the crochet stuff I have done.  I found that after I had a basic knowledge of hats and how to make them, it was really easy to create the different character hats.  Most of those I just made them up as I went a long.  So I would say about half of what you see is from a pattern.  Either one I bought on easy or a free pattern I found on line.  Then the second half was just made up because someone asked me to make them a certain hat like the Brobee one and the Ninjago hat.

Any ways, I just LOVE crochet and creating things!  I still love to sew, it has just taken to the back burner for now.  :)  I am hoping to try really hard to update more.  The first couple of post I am sure will all be catch up of the things I have been doing since March and probably my sons birthday party that is coming up.

Hope everyone has a great day!

My Girl

We have been super busy lately!  I have been doing lots of projects and trying to not go TOO crazy with everything going on.  I started to exercise with a group of ladies from church three times a week and it has been keeping me pretty busy.  It takes up almost the whole morning each time we meet but I am feeling much better about myself and feeling good.  The days we do not get together I work out by myself at home.  The other day I ran 4 miles on my elliptical without stopping.  I have NEVER done that before.  I usually do 3 miles and I usually stop a million times.  haha

A couple of weeks ago something happened to me I wanted to share with you.  It is personal and not crafty related.  BUT it is entertaining!  My daughter....my sweet little baby girl KNOCKED HER FRONT TOOTH OUT!  I was DEVASTATED!  Is it sad that I kept thinking, "Why couldn't it have been my SON?"  haha  Boys are supposed to have teeth missing but not sweet little baby girls.  I cried...a bunch that night but by the end of the next day I just loved her that much more.  Her is a picture of her right before she went to be that night.

She was still smiling and waiting for the tooth fairy to come.  The tooth fairy felt so bad that she knocked her tooth out she gave her extra money!  ;)   My poor daughter had a lisp BEFORE she knocked the tooth out so you could only imagine that got much worse.  Despite it all I just love her to death and I think it has made her even more adorable!  Check out this other picture I got of her last Sunday after church

 Gotta love her!

Hair clips

So a LONG time ago it seems I was very into making hair clips.  It really has been a while since I made hair clips for babies.  I took pictures for someone's baby shower last month and so I brought a hair thing to give her.  She thought it was so cute she asked for my etsy web address and then ordered 4 more clips from me.  When I showed up at her house with the hair clips she handed me some flowers and a felt cupcake she found in the dollar section at Michael's.  She asked me if I could make her some more clips with the flowers she got.  So I got right to work....okay really it took me about a week or two to get around to it.  haha  The baby isn't born yet and isn't due for another couple of weeks.  I have to show you one of the headbands I made though because it is so cute.

Isn't it cute?  I hate it sitting on my ugly ironing board but I was in a hurry when I took them.  :)  She asked me if a couple of them could be Velcro hair clips.  I hadn't done those before but it was SO easy!

You just open it up and put the one side under a section of hair and then velcro it closed.  Easy right?  And what a great way to do hair clips that aren't going to bug little babies heads, or for babies with hair not quit long enough for alligator clips.

I totally didn't take a picture of the rest of the stuff I made her but oh well.  Now you can see that I HAVE been working on stuff and I haven't just been sitting around all the time not blogging.  I haven't been able to get myself back into blogging after we moved.  Before we moved I was already having a hard time.  Then the internet wouldn't work and now I have just gotten out of the habit.  I really haven't been working on as much stuff either.  What has messed me up the most was I ALWAYS blogged first thing in the morning. That is when I always browsed all the blogs I loved too.  I would get the kids up and get us all breakfast and then we would sit on the couch together for an hour or so watching cartoons while I had my lap top on my lap either writing a blog, or browsing other blogs.  Now we have to get ready for school as soon as I get him up and so there goes my blogging and browsing time.  My sons school starts so late and it kinda kills the morning.  I haven't also started something new I am really excited about.  No it is not ANOTHER crafty project!  I think I am busy enough between the sewing, crafting and crocheting for now.  I have started exercising a couple of times a week with some ladies from church.  My body hurts so bad this week but I don't even care because it would be so wonderful to be in shape again.

So for now, the blogs will continue to be a "whenever I can manage to sit down and write one"  thing.  Some weeks will be better then others but for now it will have to do.

What has everyone else been working on lately?  Anything for Easter?

Buttercup Bag

I haven't made the buttercup bag in a while.  I decided about a year ago to actually buy the pattern with the license to sell it, then never made it.  Sometimes I do silly things like that.  I have had "plans" but just never did it.  SO, a friend had a birthday and I thought I'd better make her something.  I decided to do a purse for her and so I busted out with the enlarged version of the buttercup bag.  I found this cute fabric at walmart and I think it turned out really cute.

I didn't want the inside to be JUST black so I put a strip of the polka dot fabric just at the top of the pocket.  I love how the inside turned out.

I like the light blue flower too.  It gave just the right tough to finish it off.   I hope you like it Kerry!